EverettWaller

Primary Member, Tribal Representative

Primary Member, Osage Minerals Council, Royalty Policy Committee

Everett Waller was named as a primary member of the Department of Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee, and as a member of this committee advises Secretary Zinke “on policy and strategies to improve management of the multi-billion dollar, federal and American Indian mineral revenue program.”

Everett Waller is currently Chairman of the Osage Minerals Council, which “oversees the Osage Minerals Estate, which is roughly 1.47 million acres,” and “is accountable to Osage Shareholders who own interest in the estate.” Waller, who attended the University of Oklahoma, first served on the Osage Minerals Council in the 1990s, when it was known as the Tribal Council. Waller was elected again to the Council in 2014, when he began serving as chairman. He had previously served as “Osage Chief John Red Eagle’s liaison to the mineral council.” Waller served two terms as President of the Intertribal Transportation Association, a group made up of “tribal communities and nations” that works to address tribal transportation issues. He also “sat on the Federal Highways Administration Policies, Planning and Procedures Board and helped write legislation for the Indian Reservation Roads Program.”

Revard Oil and Gas Properties (Resource Development on Public Lands)

Revard Oil and Gas Properties, a small natural gas company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, won one lease at an Osage Minerals Council lease sale held in September 2014, when Waller was Chairman of the council.

Background Information

Previous Employers

Current Activity

In September 2017, Everett Waller said that his serving on the Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee was an “‘opportunity for the Osage.'”

Waller said he would push “for regulatory changes that would help drilling on the tribe’s Oklahoma lands to be more competitive with drilling just outside them,” which Waller said was “typically much easier to pursue.

Other Information

Everett Waller has favored Osage Nation producing oil over alternative energy sources, saying “‘I have a job as chairman of the Minerals Council to protect my shareholders… We’re in the oil business.'”

“Members of the Osage Nation own most of the mineral rights in Osage County,” and the Osage Minerals Council “is worried that wind farms — their large footprints as well as their power lines and associated electrical equipment — could interfere with oil and gas development.”

Everett Waller claimed that “‘the site is the problem’” with wind-energy projects in the Osage Nation.’” “‘It’s not the alternate energy or the wind energy, anything of the fact. I have a job as chairman of the Minerals Council to protect my shareholders. This is a business. We’re in the oil business.’”

While Everett Waller was Chairman, an Osage shareholder sued the Osage Minerals Council for access to financial records, alleging that the council was spending money “frivolously on attorneys.” The case was dismissed.

In December 2016, while Everett Waller was Chairman, Patricia Spurrier Bright, who was an Osage shareholder, “filed suit in the Osage Nation Trial Court,” “suing the Third Osage Minerals Council for not honoring a request for financial records.”

Spurrier Bright claimed that she filed the lawsuit because she “‘believe[d] this council [was] the first council in 110 years to spend the million allotted to run the council for the year, and they really ha[d] nothing to show for it.'”

Spurrier Bright alleged that “she had been told from various sources that money [was] being spent frivolously on attorneys to answer questions or attend to issues that ha[d] already been settled.”

The case was dismissed in February 2017 because, under the open records law in question, “the entity that would hold the OMC’s financial records would be the Osage Nation Treasurer’s Office and not the council.”